A Government Expense We Would Shut Down: U.S. Trade Representative Office

After two months of Egypt, Japan, and Libya dominating the airwaves, the 112th Congress could return to the top of the headlines soon as a government shutdown seems more likely.

Following a series of short-term stopgap funding bills, a $50 billion difference remains between the proposals by top Republican and Democratic leaders. With this in mind, and to fight against the idea that progressives just want to spend our way out of problems, we would like to present a few ideas that might reduce government spending and increase its efficiency at the same time.

The proposed cuts we’ll be laying out in a series of blog posts this week range from military boondoggles to counterproductive drug war policies.

First up in the IPS chopping block is the U.S. Trade Representative Office (USTR). Currently employing a staff of 200 people and leasing real estate in Washington, Brussels, and Geneva, the USTR is an expensive agency, and its work seems increasingly redundant. Sarah Anderson, who directs the Institute’s Global Economy project, says:

Trade negotiators aren’t following through on President Obama’s campaign promises to renegotiate NAFTA and are showing few signs of bringing a fresh approach to talks over new trade deals. If all they’re doing is expanding a model that undermines good jobs and the environment, it would be better to shut down USTR.

This cabinet-level-but-not-technically-in-the-cabinet position has been rumored to actually be in some downsizing plans that would incorporate it into the Department of Commerce. The agency’s chief, Ron Kirk, didn’t seem to oppose the rumored move in a recent interview:

It’s not a rumor. We’ve heard of it. We welcome it…. It is hypothetical…. I don’t think we should be afraid of stepping back and taking a look and saying what do we do really, really well as USTR, and what do our partners do really well at Commerce or Ag?

The United States has signed 17 free-trade agreements, and is waiting for congressional approval on three more (Colombia, South Korea, and Panama) that the Bush administration negotiated and are similar to atrocious deals like NAFTA. Those agreements are a corporate scam, so why should taxpayers keep funding an agency that despite a change in administration pays its bureaucrats to propose the same thing over and over again?